January 27, 2014

What songs from The Infamousweren't used in a 411? My best attempt* at figuring that out is above. While the musical supervision in many a 411 can fairly be described as "terrible at times," the video magazine did a lot of good things on the music front as well, such as banging Mobb Deep's second album into the heads and minds of 14 and 15-year-old kids in the Upper Midwest. 411 banged that album so hard into my memory that I'm a bit surprised only about half of the album ended up being used. Take the preludes out of the mix and you end up seven** out of a possible 13 songs being used.

"Troubling" jokiness aside, here's where the best effort comes in. Skatevideosite has been the go-to nerd trivia/bet ending place on the Internet for a bit, but having spent a little bit of time looking at 411 soundtrack listings on there, it isn't 100% accurate. The other longtime skate video database, Skim The Fat, is still lumbering along in zombie-mode nearly five years since it's last update. While it seems to my memory to be accurate, when there's information listed, it's still incomplete as well; updates and new listings are not to be expected.

Not that long ago, Skately had a pretty good library and listing of 411s; that went away when Grind Media snatched up the rights to 411 and began posting them under the umbrella of the recently defunct Skateboarder Magazine (there was a pretty thorough scrubbing of 411 from Youtube at that point, in general). The Skateboarder reposting effort lasted less than a year (ending before Skateboarder ended), and resulted in the first seven issues of 411 being out there for pretty convenient consumption. It's likely that Grind Media (also parent of Transworld) still owns the rights to 411. It would be a service to us sad skateboard blogging class if they resurrected the resurrection of 411 and kept it going through TWS. The web content/traffic bump alone would probably be worth it. Then, maybe, I'd be able to put the question above to bed, since I'm pretty sure "The Start Of Your Ending" was used, too.

Update II: Evidently I haven't gone down the 411 rabbit-hole very recently: SkateTube is a Youtube channel that seems pretty complete on 411s through 30-ish issues and a bunch of other VHS skate vids.

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On other things, it was a fairly heavy January weekend in terms of local skateboard goings on. Early returns say things went quite well and the kids were stoked. Ben Raemers is good and did moves that could easily leave one out in the cold--I had to.
**Can't say decisively that "Up North Trips" was used in a Kools ad but I know it was used IN an ad. There is a vivid memory of this.

Update: This TLDR podcast is worth listening to regarding the post above. It's titled "Hunting For Youtube's Saddest Comments" but it's ostensibly about songs and memory, which seems relevant here.

2 comments:

Wylie Tueting
said...

411's use of The Infamous and Mobb Depp was definitely competent of 'em, but so was their use of so much music, like songs heard briefly in trailers for Hollywood Romantic-Comedies and then heard in full in The Chaos section of Best of 7 -- I'm looking at you Leona Naess's "Charm Attack." I guess they needed one long sensitive song . . . And Rob Gonzalez's landings had never looked so light.